Aileen Alfandary and Amy Goodman did their part to stir up the s**t on Monday both treating a magazine cover like earth shattering news (while ignoring a Barack Obama campaign event that had just featured sexism and Barack making a joke of it).
The New Yorker cover.
Did we even want to address it? We weren't planning on it. We think more than enough time was wasted. However, while getting ready for their TV commentary, Ava and C.I. came across something. Ms.' Feminist Wire noted, "The National Organization for Women (NOW) is encouraging its membership to e-mail letters to the New Yorker urging that the cover be removed" ("Feminists Express Outrage over New Yorker"). Here's NOW foaming at the mouth:
You don't even need to open the latest edition of the New Yorker to see racism in the media and the presidential race. All you need to do is look at the cover!
The July 21 issue of the New Yorker magazine features a caricature of Senator Barack and Michelle Obama in the Oval Office. Michelle is clad in guerrilla warfare garb, a machine gun over her shoulder. A portrait of Osama bin Laden is over the fireplace, and Barack (dressed like bin Laden) is giving Michelle a fist bump while a U.S. flag merrily burns in the fireplace. In this context, we're guessing the fist bump is the one Fox News described as a "terrorist fist jab."
New Yorker editor David Remnick says it is satire, so that makes it okay?
Sorry, we're not buying it. This cover will appear on newsstands across the country, possibly the world, and will likely do more to fuel racist stereotypes than to skewer them.
Take action NOW by sending a message to David Remnick.
Your message to the New Yorker? Tell them, "If your cover cartoon about the Obamas is a satire, we aren't laughing. Stop peddling racism and religious intolerance in your magazine!"
No, NOW, it's not racism. (Rebecca says, "Girls, calm the f**k down before you give the rest of us feminists a bad name.") But where in that is the call for the magazine to be removed as Feminist Wire stated? It's in the message they ask you to send.
In the words of Carly Simon, "Get a grip, girl." That's what Carly sings in "Born to Break My Heart" (Letters Never Sent) and certainly last week was one heartbreaking moment after another as psychos and cultists emerged to scream "racism!" over a cartoon that wasn't and use that to suck all the time that could have gone to actual news.
Ava and C.I.: "Feminist Wire and NOW have shamed themselves by refusing to call out not only Bernie Mac' sexist 'comedy' routine but Barack's turning it into a joke with his 'just kidding' remark after pretending to call Mac out. Bitches*, your push-up bras must be too tight. You're betraying feminism and we're not going to stand for it. Monday morning the talk should not have been about a cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker that sent up the Obama. It should have been about Barack Obama's event. This is the man who called out rappers for their use of 'ho' but didn't call it out at his own campaign event the Friday before. The man who called out Don Imus for the same. He seems to think there's a different standard when it comes to his own official campaign events that he's present for and leave it to the useless dumb asses passing themselves off as feminists to provide him with cover. Barack Obama, as The New York Times reported, will not address sexism. He thinks he's addressed it in his talk of 'injustice' and he farms the topic out to a dithering fool from Florida who is idiot enough to run interference for him. Repeating for the dumb bitches who can't grasp reality: When a presidential candidate has an event and presents a comedian who does a routine about what whores women are and then the candidate pretends to call it out before making his own 'joke' of the whole thing, real feminists stand up and call it out. They do not provide cover for him, they do not provide silence. You're betraying feminism and the Feminist Wire better get its act together. You have abused your tax status and deserve to lose it. We're not calling for a boycott of Ms. but, when asked if money should be donated to Ms. or the Feminist Majority Foundation or NOW, we'll say no and explain why."
[*"Bitches" used here intentionally and referring directly to the e-mail circutlated by Ms. staffers which included such comments added by them about a forwarded article on Hillary Clinton -- such as: "Screw the bitch."]
It's the same silence that Ms., the Feminist Wire, NOW, and all of Panhandle Media except for The Progressive maintained when Barack used homophobia as a campaign strategy.
You're desire to betray women and run interference for Barack Obama makes you useless. As Ava and C.I. note this week, you never could take to the wire to warn women about Barack's use of right-wing talking points to attack abortion rights. Shame on you.
And shame on KPFA which decided to do a segment exploring whether the cover was racist and anti-Arab Wednesday. The same KPFA that, along with the rest of Pacifica, was mourning the death of boundary pushing George Carlin not all that long ago and bragging about how WBAI was the radio station that broadcast Carlin's infamous monologue.
So KPFA decided the way to go was to let Aimee Allison moderate a discussion, Allison who revealed on air that she found the cartoon offensive. Good to know there was no concern about objectivity.
There was no concern about representation either. To discuss whether the cartoon was racist and anti-Arab, they brought on two African-American males.
Arab-Americans, as usual on KPFA, would be left in the cold.
The cartoon was not news. The only 'news' value was it let people know that even though Pauline Kael died, The New Yorker didn't die with her. (Who knew?)
NOW's idiotic call for censorship of the cover is what pissed Ava and C.I. off and they immediately called Isaiah (The Common Ills community cartoonist) to get his input. Furious doesn't begin to describe how he was. He was supposed to take this Sunday off. Instead, he drew three cartoons commenting on the faux outrage.
First up, Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Take Two"
Next up, Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Take Three"
And finally, Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The approved cover"
Cedric: "I'm getting pretty sick of this notion that bi-racial Barack can call himself Black but anytime someone else notes he's Black, it's racism. As an African-American man, I don't find my race something to be ashamed of and don't scream 'racism' if someone notes I'm Black."
It was faux outrage, stirred up by a lot of s**t stirrers and White Mommas who don't know the first thing about racism, say Ty, Betty and Marcia. They further point out that this nonsense of screaming 'racism' falsely every five seconds makes it that much harder when actual racism needs to be combatted.
Has racism, like art, become something in the eye of the beholder? Or is that all of us writing this editorial can grasp that if you self-present as Black and the media accepts that narrative, they're going to portray you as such.
Should Barack be elected president (it doesn't appear likely at this point) is the whole nation supposed to ignore that he identifies himself as Black?
Is that how we start that supposedly sought after conversation on race?
The reality is that a real conversation on race in the US goes well beyond Black and White but that a bunch of left overs from the 60s can't stop fighting the same tired battles. (In that regard, Barack was correct.) A cartoon that portrays Barack and Michelle -- at worst -- as terrorists is not racism nor is it sexism. And nothing in the comic can be pointed out that would be seen as such by any rational person who wasn't a partisan.
It's past time for America to grow the hell up and that includes all the people treating a person's race as something shameful. That's the people who are admitted racists as well as the 'left' helpers who think race -- like illegitimacy? -- must never be mentioned.
The Civil Rights struggle was not won (Barack's wrong on that) and there's much work to be done. Wasting everyone's time over a cartoon and mock outrage (or idiotic outrage for those stupid enough to be offended by a cartoon that sent up Barack and Michelle in non-racist and non-sexist terms) isn't accomplishing a damn thing.
It did, however, prevent coverage of real stories. Coverage of US war resisters Robin Long and James Burmeister. Coverage of Barack's campaign event which goes to a now established pattern of sexism. When the Feminist Wire decides to stop schilling for Barack, maybe they can get around to addressing that? Because calling women "hos" at a campaign event? Not allowed. Making jokes about it after the booing? Not allowed. Being silent on what happened? Making yourself useless.